Ashes And Grave

by Aiden Bates

  “Valuable information,” I assured him. “If you’ve got business to deal with, I can really manage—”

  “I do,” he said. “If I had my phone on me, it would be slowly melting from the calls, I’m sure.”

  I looked around inside the room. There were pictures on his narrow dresser. Of him and, I assumed, his brother. And another man clearly not related but just as close. And of a beautiful woman. Maybe his mother? “You don’t keep your pictures out in the main room?”

  He looked over at the dresser, at the pictures, and shrugged. “I take meetings here,” he said. “Best not to show my sentimental side to the council or their envoys. Any little bit of softness, and they’ll find a way to exploit it.”

  “Sounds like a very healthy government,” I remarked. “No wonder Emberwood stays apart.”

  His friendly demeanor hardened slightly at that. “It’s to ensure that our leadership is always strong. And we stay apart because no one wants to deal with us, not because there’s anything wrong with the way we run things.”

  I put my hands up. “Of course. It’s not my business. I can’t say the cabals are run with more compassion.”

  Nix scoffed, taking still more offense somehow, as if he were looking for reasons to do so. “It’s not—look, compassion and strength aren’t mutually exclusive. You can be hard, and also care for your people. They can challenge you, and still look to you for leadership.”

  Clearly I had hit a nerve, though I hadn’t realized I was about to come into contact with one. “Whatever you say,” I assured him. “It’s none of my business, I’m not here to govern.”

  “No, you’re really not,” he said. “And you have no idea what’s required of this job, what it takes to run a community like this, what the pressures are. What you have to give up, how you have to compromise without looking weak for doing it.”

  I frowned. “Ah... I’m not sure what we’re talking about anymore. If I misspoke, I apologize.”

  “It’s the attraction,” Gabby said. “He’s losing his mind. Look at you, you sexy—”

  “Please shut up,” I snapped at her.

  Nix’s jaw hardened. “The fuck?”

  “Not you,” I said, waving him off.

  “Right,” he said, “not me. Your ghost friend. Convenient that no one else can see or hear her. You can just say whatever you want, and backtrack with an easy excuse. It’s a condition, it’s a ghost.”

  Clearly, he was trying to pick a fight. It was my being here. He had a moment of acceptance, and was now rejecting it. I could see that clearly enough—cabal education included plenty of psychology classes. All magic started in the mind. “Maybe I should stay at my own lodging,” I said, and started to move past him.

  He put an arm out to block my way, leaning against the doorframe. “You can sleep here,” he said. “I told you that you could, I’m a dragon of my word.”

  “You clearly do not want me here,” I told him. “I am okay with that. Please move.”

  “I said you can stay,” he growled. “I meant what I said, and I’m not walking you back to your shack.”

  So, he at least admitted that it was a shack. On some level that was a kind of progress. “I’m not asking you to. I remember the way. Unless you’d like to summon a guard to escort me.”

  “Why are you so opposed to staying here?” he demanded. “What have I done except be courteous and offer you my home? Is it not good enough for you?”

  I stared at him, unbelieving. “The cognitive dissonance you are displaying is astoundingly—”

  He snarled, and grabbed me by the jacket. In the heartbeat that it took me to react by bringing a word of magic to my lips and a spell to my fingertips in defense, he kissed me.

  “Yes,” Gabby chirped.

  I was stunned into paralysis. His lips were hotter than a human’s, like they should have burned mine. He breathed hard through his nose, and held my jacket fast in his fist.

  It... wasn’t that bad after a second or so.

  I started to open my mouth, to deepen the kiss, but he let me go, and let me go with a movement that was almost a shove, as if I were the one to have started it.

  He looked stricken, horrified at what he’d just done.

  I probably looked about the same.

  “I...” he dropped his arm, and made fists of his hands. “I’ll go. Deal with the council. Reassure everyone.”

  “Okay,” I said cautiously. I could still taste his lips on mine, still smell his breath. I still tingled where he’d kissed me. “Should I...?”

  “Stay,” he said. “Really. Uh... that won’t happen again.”

  I gave him a slow nod. “Okay.”

  “I’ll be gone a few hours probably,” he went on.

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll try not to wake you if I come back and you’re still asleep.”

  “Okay.”

  He seemed to be waiting for something, but I could not imagine what it was. When whatever it was didn’t show up, however, he simply turned and left. Very quickly.

  I turned to Gabby. “Not another word.”

  Even with that on my mind, plaguing me, it did not take me long to fall asleep. I slept, as many a necromancer does, like the dead. So, if Nix came back sooner than expected, I did not know. Gabby didn’t wake me—she needed the rest as much as I did, but could only get it while I was sleeping.

  I had dreams. Rare for me. Perhaps I did not sleep as deeply as I hoped. I was young again, at the table with Nagyi, eating her paprikash chicken and the heavy bread that she made with every meal—rosemary, garlic, and of course paprika worked into the dough.

  Ivan was there.

  He watched me eating, his eyes full of malice. His plate was untouched. “Why do you not eat?” Nagyi asked him.

  Ivan didn’t respond. I took another bite of the bread, chewed it, washed it down with water. Each movement I made seemed to make him more and more angry. Then, with no warning at all, he leapt across the table at me, his fingers crooked to claws. “It’s not fair!” he screamed at me as he came for my face with fingers that were suddenly stained black. His eyes became bloodshot, his young face hollowing with desiccation. “Not fair, not fair!”

  I woke with a start, shaking. Or, no—I was being shaken. I shrugged the hand off, thinking it was Gabby at first. “Leave me,” I snapped. “I am fine. What?”

  I turned, and saw Nix instead. “You were dreaming, I think. That, or a ghost had you, or something.”

  My body was somewhat heavy, parts of me still asleep. I twisted to my back. “Dreaming,” I said. “A nightmare. It is fine, though. How long did I sleep?”

  “About six hours,” he said. “What were you dreaming? You were talking. Saying you were sorry?”

  I barely remembered it, though I recalled trying to fend Ivan off, apologizing that I could eat while he could not. “Doesn’t matter,” I muttered.

  Nix’s lips thinned, and he backed away from the edge of the bed as I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Was there a panic?”

  “Some,” he said. “But I talked the council down. They were considering throwing you out.”

  “A common enough reaction,” I admitted. “I am still here, so I assume you were successful.”

  “For the moment,” he agreed. He rubbed his neck. “Listen... about before...”

  I shook my head. “Let us pretend that it did not happen. It is a stressful time. You cannot be blamed for doing foolish things you did not intend.”

  When he didn’t respond, I looked up at him, squinting as my eyes adjusted more thoroughly to the lamp light. He did not seem as a man who was about to agree with me.

  Gabby appeared behind him. She looked up at him, frowning. “He stood outside the door for like ten minutes,” she said. “Started talking to himself and then stopped. I think I’ve been made.”

  I sighed. “Gabby, please make yourself scarce.”

  Nix flinched, and looked around for her just as she put her hands up, rolled
her eyes and faded into the ether. “She’s here?”

  “Gabby is more or less always around,” I said. “But for the moment, she is as gone as she’s like to get.”

  “Why’d you send her away?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Imagine you had an invisible friend that no one could hear, running commentary on every conversation you have.”

  He chuckled, smiling a bit. “Ah. Okay. I can see how that would get old.”

  “Actually, you get used to it,” I breathed. “But sometimes it feels as though a conversation is meant to be had without spectators. What is wrong?”

  “Cognitive dissonance, maybe,” he said.

  Oh, boy.

  “The thing is,” he went on, “I... am attracted to you.”

  That wasn’t heat in my cheeks. I was just very warm from the blanket, and recently woken. “I will take that for a compliment. It would be a lie to say I did not find you appealing as well.”

  “Right,” he said. “I mean, thanks. But whenever I notice it, it makes me... just... angry. Not that you’re a bad person, you don’t seem to be, but—”

  “But a necromancer tortured your brother,” I provided when it seemed it would pain him to say it himself. “And ripped your family apart. I can understand this feeling, and I don’t hold it against you.”

  “That’s just it, though,” he said as he sank onto the edge of the bed. I pulled my feet back to give him room, and he maneuvered a little closer, a mix of worry and pain in his expression. “I know you’re not responsible. I know that it had nothing to do with you. And I want to feel like it didn’t. Or... I don’t know, I just want to feel one way or another. Feeling both ways is making me crazy. The part of me that’s my father keeps telling me that I can’t trust you, that I need to watch you, wait for you to slip up and prove that you came here to hurt us. The other part knows that I need you here to help me with this, and that...”

  The words died on his lips with a sigh, as if he were holding up a world on his shoulders, and was becoming weary of it.

  I felt for him. I admired his candidness, and what he was trying to do for his people here. How he wanted to protect them, and that he was willing to set aside his bias—mostly—to see it done. And I wanted to make it easier for him. “It wouldn’t be prudent for us to be involved, Nix,” I said softly. Softer than I had intended. Not with the kind of finality that it really required.

  Especially not when I was already lying to him, even if only by omission.

  “No,” he agreed. “I guess it wouldn’t. As the leader of the weyr, even if it’s only temporary—assuming it turns out to be—I should be able to put duty first. Rationally, I know that.”

  “Irrationally?” I wondered.

  He put a hand on my raised knee, his fingers hovering above it for a moment before resting there. His jaw muscles twitched. A struggle took place behind his eyes. “I don’t have a mate,” he said. “And I never really had the chance. Pendrig was the pride of the weyr before, and then my father... and now I’m in his position and no one really understands the kind of pressure I’m under.”

  Although it seemed like a bad idea, like it would encourage him, I reached up tentatively to rest my hand on his. “You’re lonely,” I whispered. “Believe me. It is a thing that I understand very well.”

  “Will you tell me no?” he asked.

  So much longing in his face. And it had been so long since I was touched. Since someone looked at me and did not have that little bit of fear, at least, that getting close to me was like getting close to the grave. There was even a bit of it in Nix’s eyes, as he looked at me, but there were other things, too. Heat. Desire. Conflict that threatened to tear him apart.

  Professionally, it was a terrible idea. I was here in a specific capacity, representing Custodes Lunae.

  But I was here, too. Mikhail Baranov. The lonesome necromancer that reminded people they would one day die.

  “I... don’t know,” I admitted.

  But Nix, it seemed, wanted an answer. Wanted to know, even if I wasn’t sure. So he leaned in to find out. He pressed my knee down, and slid in close, and leaned in, and let his lips hover a bare inch from mine, his eyes searching my face.

  I knew what Gabby would say.

  And sometimes, she saw things that I could not.

  Experimentally, I leaned toward him, closing the bit of space left between us. His lips were softer this time. Not the hard, angry kiss he’d given me before, but one full of curiosity and long pent-up needs. He caught my lip between his, held it, let his tongue test the boundary of my mouth for some sign that I would turn him back. I didn’t. It had been so long. He was an honorable man. There were worse decisions, surely.

  He tasted of spice and sweetness, and a hint of something vaguely alcoholic. I drew back just slightly. “You have been drinking.”

  “A little,” he admitted. “Just to work up the nerve.”

  “I did not think there were such things as nervous dragons,” I mused.

  “I didn’t know there was such a thing as a sexy necromancer.”

  Well... it isn’t like I have ever said that I am not susceptible to some degree of flattery.

  He kissed me again, more urgent now that the first barrier had been breached. He pushed toward me, drew me to the side, until we lay facing one another, and slipped his fingers into my hair. Our eyes closed, and for long moments I was aware only of my lips, my tongue, the taste of us mixing together.

  His hand drifted, gliding down my neck, over my shoulder. Out of respect for his bed things, I had worn my clothes to sleep in. He found the collar of my shirt, slipped a finger beneath to trail over my collarbone, then traveled a winding path down my arm to my hand. He drew it up, pressed it to his chest. The muscle there shifted and bulged to track the movement of his arm.

  He drew the blanket down, slid his hand under my shirt and pressed his warm palm and fingers to my side. The heat was exquisite, and seemed to spread from where he touched me. He spread that heat down, toward my hip, under the band of my jeans and around, to reach for my ass.

  With a firm handful, he pulled me closer to him, until we were pressed together. He was hard, his cock throbbing against me through his track pants and my jeans both. His hips moved, and I gave a quiet, accidental groan as he ground his cock against mine.

  At the noise, he paused, and pulled back just enough to look me in the eyes as he whispered. “None of this feels like no.”

  “That is because it is not,” I breathed. “But... you could have problems, if someone were to discover this.”

  “I know,” he said. “So they can’t.”

  “Reasonable,” I murmured.

  “But I still want to,” he added.

  I smiled. “So do I.”

  “So...”

  I shrugged. “So, try not to be too loud?”

  He snorted, grinned, and redoubled the efforts of his lips. I reached for his hip, found the buttons of his tear-away pants, and pulled the first few free. I drew the fabric aside and slid my hand between us. When I found his cock, hard and already moist at the tip, he shivered against me, and moved his hips back enough that I could get my fingers around it in a loose grip. I tugged, stroking him slowly as he panted into my mouth. He was not fully hard at first, it seemed, because he hardened to stone as I tugged at him.

  His fingers dug into my ass cheek, squeezing at first, and then pawing and prying as he found the cleft of my ass and worked his fingers into it, searching. He found my hole easily, and stroked a finger over it, teasing gently as if to ask a silent question or make a silent promise.

  I had a difficult time focusing when he did that. His question was unvoiced, perhaps, but my answer was not. A moan escaped me, and he swallowed it up, filling my mouth with his tongue to prevent more noise from perhaps alerting sharp ears to our misdeeds. At the same time, he prodded my hole more deeply, teasing more insistently, so that keeping myself from being louder became a more and more difficult task.

 
To match him, I milked up on his cock, pulling and squeezing until a small trickle of slick precum left him. I gathered it on my fingers, and spread it around the head of his cock before I gripped him again and stroked tight against the fleshy crown of him.

  His middle tensed, and twitched, and he thrust his hips into my fist. A low growl bubbled up from his chest, and he pressed hard against my mouth to keep it trapped between us. I stroked faster, tighter, twisting my fist. He worked his finger just inside, and with no real lubrication it became somewhat trapped there as he wriggled it, making the nerves come alive all over again, so that my body began to ache for more—for a proper invasion of something larger and slicker.

  At first I thought that perhaps he sensed that when he withdrew from me, and pulled his hand from inside my jeans. He tugged at my shirt, urging me to remove it or threatening to do it for me. I sat up enough that I could get it off, and he did the same, pulling the zipper of his hoodie down and casting it aside before he tore at his track pants until the buttons popped and he could toss them as well.

  His clothes were easier to remove, and he seemed to lose patience with how long it took me in comparison, because he took my fingers from the button of my jeans and did the job himself, unzipping before he pulled at them, and made me lift my hips so that he could unclothe me.

  His eyes lingered, traveled over my skin. He parted my knees, and traced his fingers down the inside of my thighs to find the tight mound of my balls between them, and my cock standing erect above those. A smile played over his lips, and he craned his head to one side as he pried at my ass, as if examining the entrance hidden there. He licked his lips, his eyes half-lidded, and raised a finger to his mouth. He gathered spit, and then carried it to the tight ring and stroked languidly, spreading it around.

  I exhaled a sharp breath as my hips rolled almost of their own volition, offering him easier access. He gave a soft chuckle, and looked at me with a glint of warning in his eyes before he put a finger to his lips.

  With a nod, I clenched my jaw shut and breathed through my nose, choking on gasps and groans as he teased a thick finger slowly inside me. He worked me open easily enough, given how long it had been since I had anyone inside me. His finger found my prostate as if he’d seen a map of the inside of me, and with a smug look on his lips, he watched my face and gave it a long, deep prod, tugging at the tender gland.